Housing in Southern Africa October-November 2016

and systems with which they are built are not as sturdy as the trusted, hundreds-of-years-old bricks and mortar, this has caused stakeholders in the housing sector to tread care- fully in employing these technologies on a wide scale. As much as the human need for shelter is one of the most fundamen- tal of human needs, these needs Asmuch as the human need for shelter is one of themost fundamental of human needs, these needs – and the needs of our societies as a whole are not static. policy and improve on it. He addressed media, delegates and industry stakeholders at the recent inaugural 2016 National Human Settlements Conference. and the needs of our societies as a whole are not static. Chikane points out, “While the world around us has changed significantly over the past few centuries, building materials have remained relatively the same. Innovations in housing have the Acting CEO of the National Home Builders Registration Council, Abbey Chikane says that it is important that we relook at the housing

What b will not take

Abbey Chikane

C hikane says, “The South Af- rican population dynamics require that we rapidly imple- ment innovative building technolo- gies. It has been almost five years since the launch of the Legacy Build- ing project using innovative building systems and there is still market and consumer resistance amongst low cost housing householders.” The project aimed to explore the use of innovative building tech- nologies (IBTs) in enabling the de- velopment of sustainable human settlements as well as addressing the backlog in housing delivery. He adds, “South African construc- tion firms by and large have shown resistance to building houses using innovative building technologies. There is clearlymore that needs to be done to educate consumers in order to drive demand of IBT. An IBT house looks like any other houses but its building materials are typically thin and hollow compared to conventional materials although no less durable” While the issues stem largely from the perception that the materials

potential to stretch the use of a house far beyond merely providing shelter and create housing that can adapt to its physical and social environments.” He cites, “Changing energy de- mands and urban migrations pat- terns showing almost 80% of our population will live in cities. This makes it necessary to produce hous- ing at a faster rate. The varying and changing climatic conditions are all reasons why we must continue to make innovative building technolo- gies a priority for the housing sector.” Government has set a target that will see at least 60% of all houses constructed by 2017 built using IBT systems. The National Building Registrations Council is the agency of government tasked with driving the adoption of innovative building technologies. As it is the case withmany innova- tions, early adopters of new technolo- gies are always a small percentage of total population. The new technology needs to prove itself first before it can enjoy broader acceptance, but when one looks at the benefits of technol- ogy – which are all around us – there

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